Inside North Korea: Forbidden photos taken inside Kim Jong-un's secretive state. Life in North Korea – the early years. As one of the world’s most isolated countries, North Korea tends to do things differently.
Since the division of the Korean peninsula in 1948 it has grown into a rigid and idiosyncratic society, shaped around the personality cult of the Kim dynasty. While most North Koreans alive today have never known a different way of life, to the outside world it remains an enigma. But as economic reforms slowly erode the system of regulation, this series traces the path of an average North Korean – from cradle to grave. Birth Parents are required to register the birth of a baby, with information about the the new citizen kept in three places: at the local town hall, with the police and with the secret police.
Life in North Korea – coming of age. You become a legal adult in North Korea at 17 and immediately receive one of two types of documents – identifying you as either a resident of Pyongyang or not.
The type of ID will determine how much freedom of movement you are allowed. Most North Koreans cannot leave the county without the state’s permission but Pyongyang residents have fewer restrictions. This is also the age when all North Koreans will join the youth league, officially named the Kim Il-sung Socialist Youth League. This organisation is a copy of the Soviet komsomol, however, unlike the USSR, membership is universal. Becoming an adult also means one has a duty to vote. Unseen North Korea captured by American photographers. American photographer and reporter granted unprecedented access for week-long road trip through North KoreaThey were allowed to travel to the country's spiritual summit, called Kaema Plateau, or 'The Roof of Korea'Saw vehicles like those of 1950s China, children playing football in the rain, teenagers' picnics and moreBut they were not allowed to stray off-course and were accompanied at all times by a 'minder' who supervised them By Corey Charlton for MailOnline Published: 18:35 GMT, 23 October 2014 | Updated: 05:29 GMT, 24 October 2014 The Kaema Plateau, the 'Roof of Korea,' is a stunning, forest-covered highland nestled in such treacherous mountains that it was never taken by the Allies during the Korean War.
Photos that reveal North Korea's shocking construction methods. Joins show different consistencies of concrete, risking fractures along batch-lines could appear.
"The pictures which purport to be of [a] high rise block in North Korea are truly shocking," said Professor John Nolan, the former President of the London-based Institution of Structural Engineers. He pointed to the building's misaligned windows and flimsy steel rebar. "Quality control appears to be an alien concept," he said. "If this is a genuine example of the general standard of high rise construction in North Korea, it is no surprise to me that the [recent] collapse occurred and there is a serious risk that it will not be an isolated incident. " Primitive hoists for transporting concrete Slab edges being cast after main wall casting, with no reinforcing bar evident The complex, which opened in June 2012, is made up of three 47-floor buildings and 15 buildings of between 20 and 36 floors.
Steelwork appears flimsy and incapable of sustaining structure, lack of caging visible. Weeping with joy, relatives reunited after decades as North Korea allows families from the South to cross the border. Hundreds of South and North Koreans reunited after more than 60 yearsMore than 100 elderly South Koreans travelled to North Korea for reunionsAbout 180 North Koreans are also expected, Seoul has saidReunions between residents of the two countries planned until Tuesday By Associated Press and James Rush Published: 10:40 GMT, 20 February 2014 | Updated: 16:28 GMT, 20 February 2014 Hundreds of elderly North and South Koreans, separated by war more than six decades ago, were being tearfully reunited today during a rare period of eased relations between the two countries.
More than 100 elderly South Koreans travelled through falling snow to North Korea's Diamond Mountain to reunite with relatives they had not seen since the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953. May Day in North Korea exposes new class divisions. Pyongyang is awash in a sea of flags as waves of workers, bouquets in hand, line up in front of the statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il on Mansudae Hill to pay their respects.
The Rodong Sinmun, official mouthpiece of the Worker’s Party, tells of workers across the country participating in sports matches and picnics organised by their state employer. It is 1 May, celebrated in North Korea as International Worker's Day. Until the food crisis of the early 1990s, defectors claim, such festivities were indeed the norm. Now, 1 May serves as a clear reminder of North Korea's widening class gap amid the increasing prominence of the market economy. A former worker at a foreign currency earning enterprise based in Songnim, North Hwanghae Province explained to Daily NK: “a class system between workers began to form a few years ago. “State factory workers spend the day cultivating their vegetable gardens or just keeping busy at home. Employees at individually-run enterprises fare best.
Enter. How do you get a job in North Korea? Every week we ask a North Korean your questions, giving you the chance to learn more about the country we know so little about.
This week Matthew M. asks: What are the differences in jobs in North Korea, how frequently can you change jobs, and what about pay? A day in the life of Pyongyang – how North Korea's capital goes to work. 6am The day starts early in Pyongyang, the city described by the North Korean government as the "capital of revolution".
Breakfast is usually corn or maize porridge, possibly a boiled egg and sour yoghurt, with perhaps powdered milk for children. Then it is time to get ready for work. North Korea has a large working population: approximately 59% of the total in 2010. A growing number of women work in white-collar office jobs; they make up around 90% of workers in light industry and 80% of the rural workforce. Many women are now the major wage-earner in the family – though still housewife, mother and cook as well as a worker, or perhaps a soldier.
Makeup is increasingly common in Pyongyang, though it is rarely worn until after college graduation. Revealing pictures show North Korea's flatpack factories, empty motorways and glittering Hotel Of Doom. Swedish photographer Björn Bergman, 59, spent nine days travelling the world's most secretive stateIt took him two years to obtain a tourist's visa and was escorted round on an official tourbus By Helen Lawson Published: 16:04 GMT, 18 April 2013 | Updated: 15:29 GMT, 19 April 2013 These revealing images shed light on life inside North Korea, the world's most secretive state.
The images were captured by Björn Bergman, 59, who spent nine days travelling around the nation. There he saw motorways devoid of any traffic, mass military displays by choreographed troops ,and rural poverty. Scroll down for video An official regime photographer waits for the birthday anniversary celebrations of the country's founder Kim Il-Sung, who is commemorated every April at his statue in Pyongyang, which has a raised arm greeting the nation. 5 Things We Hope Dennis Rodman Learned About North Korea. When Dennis Rodman landed in Pyongyang, the isolated capital of the world’s most isolated country, he announced his arrival with a tweet: “I come in peace.
I love the people of North Korea!” One wonders whom the 51-year-old former basketball star thought he was reaching. No ordinary North Korean is on the Internet, nor has access to the recently installed 3G network through which Rodman presumably sent his tweet. The eccentric American baller, known as the “Worm,” kept up his awkward commentary throughout a tour of the Hermit Kingdom, where he was accompanied by members of the Harlem Globetrotters and a crew from Vice.
On Thursday, it reached its surreal climax when Rodman sat next to a portly, grinning Kim Jong Un, the pariah state’s dynastic ruler, at a staged basketball game. (MORE: Strange, But True: Dennis Rodman Is Going to North Korea) 1. Used Desktop Computers ‘Selling Like Hotcakes’ in North Korea. Used desktop computers smuggled in from China have become a much sought-after item in North Korea, where people hungry for tech skills can’t get enough of them, according to sources in the isolated country. North Koreans are going to great lengths to acquire the secondhand computers—which are often cobbled together from discarded machines—running them on car batteries and hiding them from authorities in their homes, they said. More affordable than laptops, the used desktops brought in by cross-border traders are a hot item on the black market, a source in North Hamgyong province said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Not only laptop computers but also desktop computers are very popular, so much so that there are simply not enough desktops to meet demand,” he told RFA’s Korean Service. Starving children, the elite driving Mercedes ... and why Kim Jong-Un's iron rule in North Korea could be brought down by soap operas and Skyfall. Documentary reveals undercover footage of stark realities in pariah stateHomeless boy, 8, tells how his mother found it too hard to look after himEscaped former political prisoner now sends popular culture into countryHe smuggles in DVDs and USB sticks while posing as a mushroom farmerHopes they will 'get disillusioned with regime and want to live differently'Cracks start to emerge as official is filmed calling Kim Jong-Un 'hopeless' By Simon Tomlinson Published: 11:16 GMT, 12 November 2013 | Updated: 09:12 GMT, 13 November 2013 Like his father and grandfather before him, Kim Jong-Un rules North Korea with such terrifying control that most of his subjects know very little about the world outside of their impoverished nation.
But thanks to the digital revolution, his totalitarian regime is now finding it increasingly difficult to hide the temptations of a better life from his brutalised people. Scroll down for video 'So I left and now I live outside,' he adds. Is control loosening? Koryo Tours - Tours & Tour Dates. North Korean circus revealed where rollerskating animals in gaudy costumes are forced to perform up to three times a day. The Dolphins of Pyongyang - Max Fisher. Why Kim Jong Un build aquariums as his people starve. Trained dolphins perform in a new Pyongyang aquarium. (KCNA) When youthful dictator Kim Jong Un spent who knows how much money building and populating a state-of-the-art dolphin aquarium, opened to great fanfare in Pyongyang this week, it would certainly seem like another moment of madness and unhinged narcissism by a regime that is singularly talented at both. And, of course, it is crazy -- North Korea is in the middle of yet another food crisis, and whatever these highly trained animals and their specialized equipment cost probably could have kept some number of North Koreans fed, or perhaps rebuilt the thousands of shoddy homes destroyed in recent flooding.
But there's an internal logic to these obviously wasteful extravagances, a method to the Kim family madness that is both crueler and shrewder than it might seem. Inside North Korea: A rare dispatch from deep within the lunatic rogue state enslaved by Zombie and Sons. John Sweeney enters the secretive state to see 'the true North Korea'Travelled undercover as journalists are barred from entering itHe found the regime 'a more frightening tyranny than Saddam's Iraq'North Korea hosted a marathon event to mark the birthday of the late leader Kim Il Sung By John Sweeney In Pyongyang, North Korea Published: 21:46 GMT, 13 April 2013 | Updated: 10:14 GMT, 14 April 2013. How North Korean children are taught to hate the 'American b*******' at kindergarten. By Daily Mail Reporter Published: 00:34 GMT, 24 June 2012 | Updated: 00:38 GMT, 24 June 2012 In North Korea, the systematic indoctrination of anti-Americanism starts as early as kindergarten and is as much a part of the curriculum as learning to count.
The sentiment of the U.S. - known as American b******* - is reflected in a framed wall poster inside a North Korean kindergarten classroom where children brandish rifles and bayonets as they attack a hapless U.S. soldier, his face bandaged and blood spurting from his mouth. Google Fills In Some Blanks on Its North Korea Map. When Google executive Eric Schmidt visited North Korea earlier this month with former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, they urged the isolated totalitarian state to open itself up to the Internet. North Korea and Google Maps: The 10 Best New Images. ©2013 Google.
Google boss Eric Schmidt stops to take a picture of old-fashioned computers during trip to North Korea. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt visited Kim Il Sung universityHe watched students use the search engine on old HP computersExact reason for Schmidt's visit is still unknown and described as 'private'Internet use is widely regulated in the communist country By Mario Ledwith Published: 23:14 GMT, 8 January 2013 | Updated: 12:43 GMT, 9 January 2013. 'Very, very cold and very, very strange' What Google boss's daughter thought of North Korea as diary of her recent visit to the secretive communist country appears online.
Sophie In North Korea. The longer I think about what we saw and heard, the less sure I am about what any of it actually meant. Are North Koreans really three inches shorter than South Koreans? The secret lives of North Korea - Asia - World. In between wrestling with these issues, and despite the efforts of the North Korean regime to block contacts between its citizens and foreigners, I managed to get to know some North Koreans reasonably well – at least to the extent that they were prepared to discuss with me their lives and how they saw the world.
In particular, I realised that while many, even some experts, viewed North Koreans as identical automatons who obeyed unquestioningly every order of their leaders, this was simply wrong. Kim Jong-il's regime is even weirder and more despicable than you thought. Visiting North Korea some years ago, I was lucky to have a fairly genial "minder" whom I'll call Mr. Chae. He guided me patiently around the ruined and starving country, explaining things away by means of a sort of denial mechanism and never seeming to lose interest in the gargantuan monuments to the world's most hysterical and operatic leader-cult. One evening, as we tried to dine on some gristly bits of duck, he mentioned yet another reason why the day should not long be postponed when the whole peninsula was united under the beaming rule of the Dear Leader.